AFROmedia is here to make it digital

Part 1

Here is some basic understanding of Joomla and how you file and manage content for your site. Basic content is made up of words and pictures. They are then called articles inside the joomla backend. These articles are filed in sections and categories. To help understand sections and categories I am going to use the analogy of a physical file, the lever arch kind. Please note, sections and categories have a lot to do with the menu of your site but they are NOT the menu of your site. I will get into more detail about menus once you have added some articles (content).

We need a shelf (joomla), big enough to hold our files (sections) we might need a few files (sections) or we might not depending how big our information is that we want to share with the world. The beauty of our system is we can just add more files (sections) to it if need be. Just remember I am talking about the Lever arch kind of file here. So for example I might need a file (section) called recipes and one called finances. So now I want to open the file called recipes and add some dividers (categories) so that I can organise all my recipes into some logical order. So let’s make up some divider (category) names. We might have meat dishes, baking, dessert for example. The problem I see is that meat dishes might have a problem as I can’t add any more dividers (sub category) so instead of naming it meat dishes I am going to make some called poultry, beef and pork etc. Ok cool so I have that one sorted and it looks like this.

• Recipes (section)
• Baking (category)
• Dessert (category)
• Poultry (category)
• Beef (category)
• Pork (category)
• Finances (section)

As you can see I have not added any papers (articles) to my file yet and I have not added any dividers (category) to my finance file yet. This is why before you add a stitch of info to the website you might have to write this down and plan a bit ahead. I understand that you cannot think of everything and will have to maybe go back later and revise things. That is the beauty of the joomla system you can do just that. Ok so finances file could have the following dividers (categories)

• Home loan (category)
• Banking fees (category)
• Woolworths Account (category)
• Petrol (category)
• Groceries (category)

For example, as we go and find we need some more we will be able to add them in. So now looking at the big picture this is how we have organised our files (sections) and their dividers (categories)

• Recipes (section)
• Baking (category)
• Dessert (category)
• Poultry (category)
• Beef (category)
• Pork (category)
• Finances (section)
• Home loan (category)
• Banking fees (category)
• Woolworths Account (category)
• Petrol (category)
• Groceries (category)

So cool, now we are ready to do some filing, well adding of the articles. Later we will look at how to get these articles todisplay on our site with the menu system. For now we are just filling up our filing system or adding our content to the site.

So let’s start with the some dessert recipes, I have a few so I punch them and add them to my Recipes file (section) inside the divider (category) called dessert. I do this for all the articles I have. So now the big picture looks like this.

• Recipes (section)
• Baking (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Dessert (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Article 2 (article)
• Article 3 (article)
• Poultry (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Article 2 (article)
• Beef (category)
• Pork (category)
• Finances (section)
• Home loan (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Article 2 (article)
• Article 3 (article)
• Banking fees (category)
• Woolworths Account (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Article 2 (article)
• Article 3 (article)
• Petrol (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Groceries (category)
• Article 1 (article)
• Article 2 (article)

So as you can see now we have lots of info in the backend of the site. Not all of Sections and Categories have articles but as we go we just add more stuff in. So getting back to joomla each article needs to be attached to a category which in turn has to be attached to a section. If they are not assigned to a section and a category you will not be allowed to save the article. Well that is the end of Part one. Understanding how information is filed in the joomla backend.

Part 2

So let’s get our info to show up on our site. To do this we will now make menu items. So let’s go to menus and choose either main menu or top menu for now. Later we will get to the place where we can add other menus. Let’s choose main menu, this generally is the menu that is displayed on the left hand side of the site. There are a lots of options and lots of parameters with a menu item but for now we are going to just do the default parameters.

On the top right there is a new button, click it. Then it says “Select Menu Item Type” and presents you with a list. Later you can experiment but for now choose articles. This pops out some more choices. Can you see that you can link the menu to a section or a category or just a plain article? So if you go back to our filing system analogy I could choose Section layout then make a menu item called finances and choose the section called finances. On the site that would then give me a menu item called finances. Once I click on that menu item it would display all my categories and say how many articles I have in each category. So that is a very basic menu item and I now display some of my content that I have in the backend of the site.

Let’s do that process again and this time we are going to choose category blog layout. So in main menu I click on the new button and choose articles and then choose “Category Blog Layout”. We name the menu item Dessert and choose the dessert category. Leave the settings on default for now, click on the save at the top right. When I go to the front of the site and refresh my page I will see a new menu item called dessert. Click on it and it will display 4 of my latest entries that I have added to that category in their full glory. The whole article will be displayed. If there are fewer articles it will show less, if there are more it will give me links at the bottom of the page to go to the next 4 articles.

I would suggest trying a few more menu links and seeing how your information gets displayed.

This is why I said in the beginning that the sections and categories are not the menu of your site, but they do play an important role in how you can present those articles using the menu system.

Good luck and I hope that helps understanding how joomla stores the information in the backend and how it displays the information on the frontend.